In recent years Americans and people all over the world have come to recognize that our conventional sources of energy are limited and that there is a real need to conserve energy as well as to commercially develop other energy sources. The field of agriculture is not without energy problems, and in fact because of the nature of agricultural products, much energy is required in harvesting, curing, drying, and processing certain agricultural products.
Tobacco farmers over the past decade have become more mechanized, and as a part of this, automatically controlled bulk tobacco barns have replaced many of the conventional stick type barns that were so prevalent before the acceptance of bulk curing and which basically transferred heat to the tobacco by natural convection. Bulk barns have been accepted for a good time, but with the acceptance of bulk barns came the energy crisis and the rising cost of fuel and electricity. In addition, certain fuels have been quite scarce and this has affected tobacco farmers with bulk tobacco barns. A very serious problem is presented once the availability of fuel that a farmer has relied upon in the past becomes questionable.
Though the tobacco farmer has been faced with high fuel costs, and sometimes the unavailability of fuel, it still seems that these problems are not often considered serious. Many producers of bulk tobacco barns have taken steps to make the barns more energy efficient, such steps including providing better insulation, more efficient fans, and educating the farmer in proper curing and drying techniques. But still the overall effort made seems relatively small compared to the problem, and there still exists a need for a real and practical energy contribution in the area of bulk tobacco barns that can be used by the tobacco farmer to cut fuel costs and to answer or help answer the problem raised by the unavailability of certain fuels.